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Let’s say you have an IBM ThinkPad laptop and when you turn it on all you get is a black screen with “Fan error” message. What could be wrong?
A few weeks ago, the fan in my trusty IBM T42 bought the farm. This resulted in the unit heating up considerably, as well as numerous “fan error” messages on bootup. It eventually became so bad that to boot up at all, I had to blow compressed air into the fan’s exhaust grill for 5-10 seconds, in order to fool the BIOS and make it believe the fan was actually spinning.
According to the IBM hardware maintenance guide (HMM) for ThinkPad T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p this error message indicates a problem with the fan, you can find symptom-to-FRU index on the page58.
The symptom-to-FRU index in this section lists symptoms and errors and their possible causes.
Apparently it’s time to replace the fan assembly. The cooling fan comes together with the heat sink, that’s why you’ll have to replace the whole fan assembly.
You can easily replace the fan assembly after you remove the palm rest and keyboard.
1. Remove the battery and unplug the AC adapter.
2. Remove four screws marked with yellow circles. These screws securing the keyboard.
3. Remove eight screws marked with orange circles. These screws securing the palm rest.
4. Lift up the keyboard and upnlug the keyboard cable from the motherboard.
5. Lift up the palm rest and unplug the touchpad cable from the motherboard.
6. Remove three screws securing the fan assembly, unplug the fan cable from the motherboard. Lift up and replace the fan assembly.
You’ll find step-by-step laptop disassembly and fan replacement instructions in the HMM in the chapter “Removing and replacing a FRU” on the page 70.
You can find a new fan assembly using the FRU number located on your failed fan, it might look like 91P8393, 26R7860, 13R2919, 13N5442, or 13R2657. Just google the FRU number and find a place to buy it from. Different laptop types with different screen sizes use different fans, so you have to find the correct one witch fits your model. If for some reason your fan assembly doesn’t have the FRU number, you’ll have to refer to the HMM page 216-217. On these pages you’ll find witch fan belongs to your laptop. Here you can find new and used fans for ThinkPad laptops.
For example, if have a type 2378-FVU laptop with 15.0″ LCD screen, then you need a fan assembly with FRU: 13R2657
January 2nd, 2010 at 6:10 pm
The same problem as SME described bellow:
I can’t disconnect a heatsink from a motherboard because it seems glued to a cheap on a motherboard.
December 31st, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Hey,
I was able to bypass this problem using a combination of F1 and ESC to load the boot menu.
Alternatively, you can hold ESC and go Lenovo rescue and recovery, and then select “boot from another device”
December 31st, 2009 at 4:47 am
Laptoptech, Its kind of hard for me to describe, but my laptop seems to be different than the maintenance manual and the picture above. Mine looks like the picture above but what you call the “fan assembly” is connected to that heat sink on the right of it (grey with blue center). This is connected to the mother board by some type of hardened glue or solder. Making the fan assembly and heat synch all one piece and un removeable.
December 30th, 2009 at 9:19 am
SME,
What part do you call FRU? I’m not sure what you are asking about.
I really doubt that you can disable the fan check.
December 30th, 2009 at 8:36 am
I had this problem a while back and took it to a shop where they were going to replace the FRU. They found that the FRU is soldered to the motherboard!!! They couldn’t get it loose. Has anyone seen this?
They cleaned the fan assembly and its been working for a couple of months, but I just got another fan error. I started the PC using the compressed air method mentioned above (thanks!), then went out and bought a laptop cooling pad so hopefully it won’t overheat and shutdown.
Does anyone know how to disable the fan check in the BIOS?
December 21st, 2009 at 12:53 pm
The issue comes from two different areas. If you have not blown all the debris blocking the cooling fins, do that. The next step is to clean the internals of the fan rotor and shaft. You will need to have some canned air, aluminum tape, a razor knife, 91% Isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs, thermal grease, and really light oil like Rem Oil. You will have to follow the instructions on how to removed the fan/heatsink assembly. Once you have it removed, cut the aluminum tape and bend the copper tabs holding the fan to the heatsink. The fan rotor will come out vertically.
Take your canned blowing out the rest of the heatsink, and also the rotor blades. Using the Isopropyl alcohol and swabs to clean the inside of the rotor, the shaft and the armature area, wiping clean and dry. While you are at it, clean the heatsink, CPU, and GPU of the residual thermal grease. Put a new thin even layer thermal grease on the CPU and GPU.
When you have the rotor clean, apply one small drop of Rem Oil to the fan shaft, then replace it on top of the armature. Spin to verify the fan speeds freely and noise free. Replace the fan in the heatsink, recovering your cuts with the aluminum tape.
At this point, follow the reassembly instructions per service manual. I just completed this operation on my work T61. It took approximately two hours from start to finish being careful especially with reinstalling the heatsink and torquing the mounting screws.
December 7th, 2009 at 2:53 am
if fan working fine than processor is faulty , replace cpu set will be ok
November 21st, 2009 at 3:11 pm
I think my issue has been fixed. I had purposely left my touchpad disconnected and removed so that I could see the new fan and check if it was working properly. After I put the entire laptop back together, including the touchpad panel, there were no more problems with the AC power surge to the CPU. It seems the touchpad is an important part of the circuit and if it is disconnected, there is excess current supplied to the CPU, which overheats it. Lesson learned.
November 19th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
So, of course, just after posting my last comment I opened another window and began a download. The fan started to speed up and I was able to quickly look at the SpeedFan monitor. It jumped from 43C to 95C, then shutdown about half a second later. I wouldn’t think it possible for a big jump in temp to happen so suddenly. Could it really be getting that hot, or just a bad read?
I’ve cleaned out all the insides of the laptop pretty good when I switched out the fans, so I don’t think it’s dirt or dust. If the CPU really is getting to 95C, then it is being triggered only when powered by AC and only when the resources of the CPU are being pushed up to 100% usage. This sounds like something has gone wrong with the amount energy the laptop is allowing the CPU to receive. Perhaps the chip itself has some kind of electrical resistance that has failed? I’m just guessing here based on the results I have. I went into BIOS and changed two settings under CONFIG>POWER. Both were related to settings when AC power is connected. I changed them to read “Maximum Battery” which is the same setting for when Battery Power is used, which is the only time the laptop is working appropriately. This didn’t help. I plugged in AC, began a download, the fan revved up and the laptop shutdown. Only this time I didn’t see the temperature reading jump up above 46C. It all happens so quickly, though.
It looks like I’m stuck unless someone can figure out how to prevent AC from sending too much power to the CPU. I suppose I will mess with the BIOS settings some more. I saw some settings for “Minimum power” and “Always slow” processing speed, but a super slow computer doesn’t do me much good anyway.
November 19th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Rob,
Using more powerful adapter shouldn’t be a problem. You can safely use the 4.5A adapter.
Maybe your problem is heat related.
In some laptops you can set the CPU speed to be different for battery and AC mode. Maybe that’s true for your laptop?
When you run your laptop using the battery, the CPU runs at low speed and do not overheat. But as soon as you plug the AC adapter, the CPU runs full speed and the laptop shuts down because of overheating.
Look inside the heat sink. Does it look dirty? Try cleaning the heat sink with compressed air. Maybe cleaning the cooling module will help.